“In The Knife Dance, we return to San Veneficio, city-setting of Michael Cisco’s award-winning first novel, The Divinity Student. An assortment of theological factions has gathered to decide the question of the exact nature of Jesus Christ, which promises profound consequences for the religion that bears His name. There is no dry debate here, however, as the various factions engage in shoot-outs and spycraft worthy of a gangland war. At the center of this brilliant fiction is the Knife Dance, a fabled saint’s greatest accomplishment, a deadly choreography that allowed him to overcome the Satan, but whose exact steps have been lost. Full of scenes of headlong action and ecstatic experience, The Knife Dance suggests that the edge of the blade on which we so often find ourselves may be our preferred location. It is another example of the considerable range of Michael Cisco’s talent.”

— John Langan, author of “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies”